Have a nice day? I prefer service with a scowl...

So how are you today? Chances are that you’re very similar to how you were yesterday, or will be tomorrow.

But that will not prevent the question being asked of you, accompanied by a plausible attempt at a smile, with every routine transaction such as ordering a coffee at Starbucks, paying for groceries at Tesco or buying toothpaste at Boots.

For we have entered the age of service not just with a smile but, if you are not careful, with a series of inquiries about your health, your first name, the programmes you watch on television and the football team you support.

Here's your card - and how has your health been lately? We have entered the age of service not just with a smile but, if you are not careful, with a series of inquiries

Questions that just a generation ago would have been deemed the height of intrusive impertinence are now routinely being asked as part of the ritual of acquiring your skinny latte and croissant, or swiping your Nectar card.

It is all, I am sure, done with the best of intentions.

Those who promote and support the pervasive smiley culture no doubt see it as a way of bringing some out-of-season sunshine into lives that, for all they know, might otherwise be unbearably drab and friendless.

So perhaps it is churlish to complain. All the same, those of us who grew up and matured in the vanished era of ‘service with a scowl’ want our voices heard.

We are finding it devilishly hard to adjust.

Try as we might, we cannot find it in ourselves to be nice to all the people all the time, or even, to respond positively to those who are nice to us.

Perma-smile: When is there going to be a reversion to the good old days when shop assistants were allowed to be real people, with a range of moods

Remember those incurably supercilious waiters and waitresses?

The butchers with their bloody aprons who would accompany every cut with raunchy — often highly offensive — remarks directed specifically at their female customers?

The pub landlords who made it their business to be rude to their regulars, knowing we would always come back for further ritual humiliation?

They are vanished, all of them.

They exist today only as part of our shared history; as the butt of routines by comedians like ‘The Pub Landlord’ Al Murray, or as characters in those vintage radio and TV sitcoms that are wheeled out on the digital station Radio 4 Extra and cable channels such as Dave.

Those who promote and support the pervasive smiley culture no doubt see it as a way of bringing some out-of-season sunshine into our lives

For some of us, however, Basil Fawlty was a true role model, and we fear that we shall not see his like again.

Future social historians will doubtless trace the origins of the new wave of perky politesse to the arrival of the chains of coffee houses and sandwich bars that now grace every High Street, many originating from across the Atlantic.

At Starbucks, for instance, they not only ask for your first name when you order, but write it on your coffee cup and call it out when your brew is ready.

Intimacy is all, and first names are now de rigeur in places that you might have thought impervious to such trends.

Many people complain that dignity is being stripped from hospital patients — particularly elderly ones — who are now routinely referred to by their first names. What became of Mr Jones or Mrs Smith?

At a West End theatre the other night, I ordered interval drinks and was asked for my name, so that I would be able to identify my tipple from the others on the table. As soon as I started to spell it out I was interrupted: ‘No, no, your first name!’ cried the exasperated barman.

But what if another Michael had also ordered the Chilean Sauvignon Blanc and six glasses? The ground rules for the new compulsory cordiality have been usefully set out by Pret a Manger, the ubiquitous sandwich chain.

People who want to become a member of staff are given a document called The Pret Behaviours, in which undesirable and desirable personal qualities are tabulated in three columns, headed: ‘Don’t want to see’, ‘Want to see’ and ‘Pret perfect!’

Among the no-nos are ‘moody or bad-tempered . . . doesn’t interact with others . . . minces words . . . annoys people’ — which patently doesn’t take into account those of us who are annoyed by constant, chirpy over-familiarity.

What, then, distinguishes the ‘Pret perfect!’ person?

‘Anticipates others’ needs . . . goes out of their way to be helpful . . . is charming to people . . . cares about other people’s happiness’.

What seems not to have occurred to those who drew up these rules is that people have just as much right to be miserable as to be happy, and should be left to wallow in their sadness if that is their preference.

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Throughout the ages poets have chronicled the subtle pleasures of unhappiness and the dangers of false bonhomie.

‘Hail, divinest melancholy,’ wrote John Milton in the 17th century.

And even earlier Geoffrey Chaucer, in The Canterbury Tales, warned of the menace of ‘the smiler with the knife under the cloak’.

The supermarket is another hotbed of phoney familiarity. A few weeks ago I went to my local emporium to buy a salmon.

The man behind the fish counter insisted on making quips that I could not properly make out because of the background music and his slightly difficult accent.

I could tell they were quips, though, by the expectant look on his face and because, when I was lowering the salmon into my trolley, he asked me in a pained voice why I wasn’t smiling.

Phoney: Try as we might, we cannot find it in ourselves to be nice to all the people all the time, or even, to respond positively to those who are nice to us

I wasn’t smiling because I usually find supermarket shopping a chore, a necessary burden that will not be alleviated however eagerly the staff try to make me believe I am at a comedy performance of Live At The Apollo.

That was why I was so heartened by what happened when I eventually reached the checkout. It was being operated by a brisk young man who, as he passed the first items over the scanner, delivered the standard: ‘Hello, how are you today?’

‘I’m fine,’ I replied civilly. ‘And how are you?’

‘What do you care?’ he muttered, without looking up or interrupting his repetitive task.

I was thrilled.

Did we have here the first signs of incipient revolution?

Was there going to be a reversion to the good old days when shop assistants were allowed to be real people, with a range of moods of their own which they would either choose to share with customers or not, as the fancy took them?

But my euphoria did not last long. On my next visit to the supermarket a few days later, the first person I saw as I crossed the threshold was my brave, bolshie checkout operator, now reduced to stacking shelves.

No doubt a customer more imbued than I am with the values of the smiley culture had alerted the management to the lad’s lack of charming insincerity, and he had been stripped of his rank.

My hero had become a martyr, and, in so doing, had confirmed that there is no future for churls like us, either as servers or customers. Have a nice day.